


Unspoken words

by Teki



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, awkward love, mutual comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-20
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2019-01-01 02:47:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12146964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teki/pseuds/Teki
Summary: Lance can't sleep, so he decides to wander the Castle for a little while, late at night.He meets Keith at the command deck, star-gazing.Some words are exchanged.Some don't need to be.~~~~~~~~~~Birthday fic for my friend Rose!! Happy birthday!!!





	Unspoken words

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday Rose!!! I hope this is ok, you said on the sheet that you like galaxies so i,,,, tried ;;A;;
> 
> This isn't as long as I would've liked it to be, but I still hope you enjoy it,,,, 
> 
> Thanks to Reese for being a fantastic person & beta,,, you made this fic better bless ur heart

Lance sat up in his bed and scrambled to get the sheets off himself, the fabric clinging to his sweat-soaked skin. He could hear his own heartbeat as he heaved for air, slowly calming himself down. He ran a hand through his hair as he sighed.

 

He hadn’t had a nightmare.

 

He’d dreamt of Keith.

 

It happened more and more often now, where he would have completely innocent dreams of Keith. He’d dream of the times he smiled and laughed, his sharp eyes, his silky soft hair. Lance could barely remember anything of the dreams but flashes of Keith’s face with various expressions, as if some sort of montage was playing in his head, and every bit of it made his heart ache.

 

Lance found it very annoying. The dreams kept him up at nights, making him crankier in the morning. It made it harder to meet Keith’s eyes, his heartbeat picking up at the slightest little thing. It was irritating, especially now that they were becoming closer as friends.

 

Lance would easily admit that had this started happening to him at some earlier time, he would most likely have willingly let it out on Keith. Before Shiro disappeared, before Keith was chosen to steer the black lion. Back when they were still new to the galaxy and each other. Lance had started their rivalry, and had fed it with small aggressions. Had he started dreaming about Keith back then like he did now, there was no knowing what he’d have done.

 

But things were different now. Keith was their leader, and they had all gotten closer as friends. Lance and Keith didn’t fight as much as they had back then. They were closer, on better terms - _actually friends._ Or, at least, Lance thought so. He liked to think that they were close, despite his own difficulty with being _physically_ close to his new leader, something that had never been a problem before the dreams.

 

Images from the dream he had just woken up from flashed before his eyes. Keith smiling softly, Keith standing next to him. Keith holding his hand. Keith laughing. It was Keith looking back to check on him, Keith training rigorously in the simulator room, Keith fighting to protect his friends. Keith looking at Lance amusedly, annoyingly, lovingly. Keith, Keith, _Keith_ …

 

Lance sighed once more as he dragged himself out of bed, letting his feet slide into the fluffy blue slippers placed not far from him on the cold floor. The light in the room brightened as Lance moved around. He pulled his jacket over his shoulders, not caring to change the black tank-top he had worn to bed hours earlier, and put on a pair of dark grey sweat pants. He glanced at the clock placed on his desk as he quietly told himself it was way too late for anyone to be up. He’d be fine wandering the castle a bit, just to clear his head.

 

He pulled his jacket a little closer around him as the doors closed behind him, the corridor he was now standing in was unfamiliarly dark and cold. Lance wasn’t used to being out and about while the castle was in hibernation mode. He felt out of place, as if he was experiencing something not truly meant for him. Even so, he made his way down one of the hallways.

 

There was a cold draft following him through the castle, which Lance felt somewhat thankful for. It helped keep him cool, it was a gentle reminder of the colder days by the beach back at Earth. He walked aimlessly, visiting his lion in its hangar, though his restlessness made him move on after a little while. The whole castle was dark, quiet, unfamiliar. There was something different about it when there were absolutely nobody awake.

 

At some point, Lance walked into the command-deck. The first thing he noticed was how the windows showing the space they were flying through was filled with color, and it was beautiful. The second thing he noticed was Keith, sitting on the ground in front of the windows, staring at the colors above him.

 

Lance remembered how Hunk and Pidge had explained this ‘filter’ to him. They had pressed some buttons on one of the control panels and started off babbling using a lot of technical words, but had switched when they saw his confused expression as the stars and galaxies around them became colorful.

 

Apparently, the Castle had a feature similar to the Hubble Space Telescope back on Earth, though what was really interesting was that it was automatically able to fill in colors in the same way astronomers at NASA did with pictures before they were shown to the world. The kind of pictures of colored galaxies Lance had printed out and stuck to the walls in the dorm-room he and Hunk shared.

 

The Castle was swimming in colors, from the look of those windows filling up one of the walls on the command deck. Keith was sitting right under them, his knees under his chin as he stared up at the passing stars and galaxies. He hadn’t noticed Lance yet, who slowly slinked further into the room. Lance allowed himself to study Keith’s off-guard posture for a moment, subconsciously knowing too well that the second he returned to his bed, he would dream of that relaxed expression the other paladin was wearing. Eventually Lance saw it in him to let the other know he was there.

 

“So…” It was enough to make Keith’s head snap to the side, meeting Lance’s amused gaze. “You really like this color-filling filter, huh?”

 

Keith seemed to sigh a bit as his gaze returned to the windows, though his shoulders sagged and he visibly relaxed where he sat. Lance felt somehow giddy, knowing Keith felt relaxed around him.

 

“Yeah,” Keith finally answered as Lance moved the rest of the stretch needed to sit next to him. “It’s pretty.”

 

Lance leant back on his hands as he stared up on the galaxy in front of them, seeing colors swirl and change as they moved through space.

 

“It is.”

 

They were quiet for a little while, enjoying each other’s silent company as they watched the stars. Then, eventually, Lance heard the other speak up.

 

“Why are you up?”

 

“Couldn’t sleep. You?”

 

“The same.” A sigh. Lance looked away from the window to regard Keith, who now had his eyes closed as he took a deep breath. “There’s a lot… To think about. I don’t really feel like I have the time to relax. I don’t know…”

 

Keith slowly opened his eyes, and Lance followed his gaze down to the other’s hand. He was holding his Galra knife, lightly playing with it. Lance hadn’t noticed it before now, as it had been on the other side of Keith, hidden from Lance’s view by Keith’s legs. Lance stared at the ornately made knife, before slowly looking back up at Keith.

 

“Yeah, you.. You do have a lot to think about, but you should still try to sleep.”

 

A short laugh escaped Keith as he leant back on his free arm, letting his feet slide out on the floor as he returned Lance’s look.

 

“I could say the same to you.”

 

“Hey! I’ll have you know that I haven’t wandered the castle at night for weeks now. You, on the other hand..” Lance took a second, studying the other’s face. “Well, your eye-bags say more than enough.”

 

Keith only scoffed at that, though his displeased expression didn’t last long, quickly morphing into an amused smirk as he looked back up at the stars. The smile faded a bit as he stared out at the vast space, before opening his mouth to speak.

 

“There’s a lot of stuff that has... changed. Things are different, and though not all of it is necessarily bad it still takes some getting used to. Takes time to process.” Keith put the knife down next to him, leaning back on both his arms as he stared up at the swirl of colors above them.  “I haven’t been able to sleep that well lately, so I’ve been coming here.”

 

Lance bit his lip as he stared up at the stars and the colors surrounding them. Every so often the imagery displayed to them would really remind him of specific space posters that had hung in the dorm-room he had shared with Hunk. For a second, Lance wondered if they had all been thrown out by now, if someone else were living in that room, sleeping in those beds. He wondered if his mother had taken his posters along with his other forgotten belongings.

 

“I understand. I didn’t sleep much for the first few weeks we were paladins, back on Arus. It was before we figured out that there were filters like this, but I’d still spend hours staring at the stars above us, thinking about everyone back on Earth.”

 

“Your family?”

 

“Yeah, mostly. But not only them, my friends too. It was one of those things where you think about everyone in your life, and how they would react if you died or disappeared, who would be affected and how but… It was real, yknow? I have all these people back on Earth I care about, and who care about me, and for all they know I’m… dead, or kidnapped, or worse.”

 

“Well to be fair, blue _did_ kind of kidnap us all.”

 

Lance couldn’t help but chuckle a bit at this as he stared up at the windows. He could feel the other staring at him, eyeing him from the side. Lance felt hot under his skin as he exhaled, his gaze fastened on the stars above them. He refused to meet Keith’s eyes, refused to look at him, because some part of him knew that if he did, something would be different, and there would be no going back. He let the two of them sit in silence for a moment, let Keith sit there and look at him, feeling as if he was looking through him. Though it became a little too much, too quickly. So Lance tried to break out of this weird atmosphere that had been created between them.

 

“It sure is beautiful, huh!” Lance said loudly as he gesticulated to the stars and colors shining above them. He turned his head to look at Keith in the process, the reluctance he had felt a moment earlier already gone in an attempt to make the air a bit more breathable. The look Keith gave him, however, made Lance stop dead in his tracks.

 

Keith’s expression was unusually soft, as if all the walls he had built around himself over the years had crumbled in a matter of seconds. His eyes reflected the many distant lights shining down on them, and Lance could see colors in Keith’s eyes that he had never seen before. The small, knowing smirk playing at his mouth made Lance’s heart stop, frozen in place where he sat.

 

“It is.”

 

The way Keith spoke made Lance's face heat up instantly.

 

Then Lance felt a sneaking touch against his hand, an unfamiliar warmth that he didn’t really mind. As his attention was drawn to his own hand, he saw Keith’s fingers slowly interlacing with his in a sickeningly sweet manner. Instantly, his heart picked itself up and ran amok in his chest, about to beat itself out of the very body it was keeping alive. Lance could feel his blood rush through his veins, could feel a certain embarrassed heat crawling against the inside of his skin.

 

When Lance dared to look back up at Keith, he was met with the same soft expression, soft smile, that had been here when he looked away. Lance knew he was blushing, but it was okay, because Keith was too.

 

With a nervous laugh turning into a somewhat insecure smile, Lance maneuvered his fingers to meet Keith’s, their fingers now relaxedly interlaced as they sat on the floor at the command deck. A moment went by in silence, the both of them staring down at their hands. It was intimate, new to the both of them, yet so dearly welcome. Lance wasn’t quite sure what it meant, how it’d affect them, but he appreciated the comfort Keith brought him in that moment, and he was overjoyed in being able to bring Keith the same kind of comfort.

**Author's Note:**

> There we go!!!
> 
> Again, Happy birthday Rose!!! I hope your day is as great as you are!!!


End file.
